Delusion, Derealization, and Dissociation: The Triple D’s of the Narcissist’s World

They are feral foreigners perpetually trapped in a land of make believe

Photo by Logan Voss on Unsplash

Imagine a waking life of pure fiction. Nothing is what it seems. It vaporizes into thin air when you approach it. Elusive, shape-shifting. Mercurial. You are a foreigner in a foreign land. No one speaks your language. You are constantly misunderstood or ignored and dismissed. There is no avenue to communicate. The words you hear melt into a soupy stew of of misunderstanding. You are lost. Always looking for an entrance or exit, a way to be seen, acknowledged, heard with full throated clarity.

This is the experience of the person with pathological narcissistic personality disorder (NPD). It is for those who are on the deep end of the malignant narcissism spectrum.

They never belong. They are unlike all the others. Off beat and out of step with clumsy cadence, they are the creepy ghosts among us. Empty, hollow, and numb. Confused but so much so that they can’t recognize that it is confusion. Feelings bewilder, elude, conflict. Envy and shame swirl like a never-ending rip current that pulls them under water and holds them there like mermaids who forgot how to swim. This is all sprinkled with a seething, simmering anger spackled over with…